The Gay and Lesbian Staff Association spent its early years trying to protect the identity of its members, acting as a support group for closeted congressional staffers.

But now the organization is taking a sharp turn, encouraging its members to be more public about their sexual identities and more vocal about promoting gay and transgender rights legislation. Now called the LGBT Congressional Staff Association, the group is relaunching, with the mission of making members of Congress and their staffs more aware of how integral — and integrated — gay staffers are in modern congressional culture.

For some staffers, this means coming out of the closet — for the second time.

“Our objective here is really to build on the visibility the [founders of the group] gave us,” said Natalie Fernandez, the newly elected communications director for the group who works for Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.). “Our new bylaws encourage our members to make their identities more public than the original. It’s a lot safer to be an open [lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender] Hill staffer these days, and we’re going to take full advantage of those benefits.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed to bring two key efforts to the floor before the end of the year: the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy prohibiting gays from openly serving in the military and the Employee Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Both potentially explosive issues face staunch opposition from both conservative lawmakers and family-values lobbyists. But the LGBT Congressional Staff Association, with 50 dues-paying members and hundreds on its mailing list, is taking several steps to unleash an offensive, expanding the group to include transgendered staffers, rewriting bylaws and electing five new officials.

They also want more staffers — Republican or Democrat — to come out of the closet, which they hope will add a personal element for lawmakers who may be wavering in supporting gay-rights bills.

“Just knowing someone working in your office who is out will help dispel a lot of these myths,” said Scott Simpson, the group’s newly elected president who is deputy press secretary for Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio). “I want to make sure folks know we exist. Being gay on the Hill today is less about survival and more about establishment. We’re working on taking it to the next level.”

But their opponents are also launching a new offensive.

The Traditional Values Coalition recently launched an online campaign, warning that passing ENDA would mean schoolchildren would be taught by dress-wearing “she­males” and “drag queens and transgender activists. ... Young children will be forced to learn about bizarre sexual fetishes — and you will have no say in the matter.”

“Gender identity is a serious mental disorder, and people shouldn’t be playing out their issues,” according to coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty, who said passing ENDA would cause businesses to lose customers and employers to lose workers. “It’s very confusing for kids and inappropriate, to say the least,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, you can tell ... Any woman sitting in a bathroom stall can look down and see a size 13 hoof. Those aren’t female feet.”

Longtime advocates for gay rights say they’re used to this rhetoric.

“We expect these groups to exploit people’s fears,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the main sponsor of the ENDA legislation. “For their information, there already are people running around on Capitol Hill in insane outfits. They just happen to be congressmen.”

Diego Sanchez, a legislative assistant to Frank, is running the staff association’s policy shop. He also happens to be the first openly transgender staffer. Sanchez helped Frank craft the ENDA legislation and previously served on President Barack Obama’s LGBT Policy Advisory Committee and worked as LGBT adviser for then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Through a series of lunches and meetings with members, the newly launched group aims to provide an informal Q & A for lawmakers still learning about gay and transgender issues in the workplace.

“This gives us a chance to be able to answer questions — like what things affect transgendered people like me at work,” said Sanchez. “Most members have not been able to have as much direct access with LGBT staff to ask directly related questions. ... It’s not anyone’s job to understand other people’s perspectives, but when you hear someone say that a life like mine makes them feel uncomfortable, it goes straight to the heart.”

When the staff group was initially formed nearly 15 years ago, its members were largely anonymous, banding together to protect one another from an anti-gay sentiment on Capitol Hill. In 1993, then-Republican Rep. Jim Inhofe and two other members of the Oklahoma delegation openly vowed not to hire gay aides.

“It created a lot of anxiety among gay staff,” said one of the group’s original co-founders, George Shevlin, now executive director of the House Democratic Caucus. “There was a lot of misinformation about gay people floating around the Hill. ... We needed camaraderie.”

Other co-founders include longtime Hill staffer Victor Castillo, legislative director for Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.). The group also now has sponsors from openly gay members, including Frank and Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

The group has also taken on a quiet side project: finding new jobs for the displaced staffers of former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), several of whom are gay, according to the lawyer for the staffers and other aides. Massa resigned amid allegations that he had sexually harassed male aides, but with his departure, all the office staffers lost their jobs.

“They all lost their jobs very quickly, and some of our members have been helping them get placed in new positions,” said Simpson.

While most gay staffers no longer fear for their jobs, the group suspects that many still spend their Capitol Hill careers closeted, a long-term issue aides and former alumni hope will eventually disappear.

“I learned in my own life that coming out is a process,” said Robert Raben, a former staffer and top lobbyist of the Raben Group. “There has to be constant opportunity to talk amongst yourselves and understand what it means to be a professional who is gay. There remains an enormous amount of people who are still closeted. As long as people are struggling with that, they will need a safe space.”